Chicago board votes to close 50 schools

CHICAGO — The Chicago Board of Education voted on Wednesday to close 50 schools - including about 10 percent of all elementary schools in the largest mass school closing in the nation.

The closings in mainly Hispanic and African-American neighborhoods have drawn protests by parents and teachers union leaders who say the closures will put children in danger with longer walks through troubled areas as well as disrupt families.

The Chicago Teachers Union, which has clashed with Mayor Rahm Emanuel over other school issues and held a seven-day strike last fall for better pay and conditions, accused the city of racial discrimination in federal lawsuits filed last week.

The Chicago mayor appoints the schools’ chief executive and the school board.

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The union blasted Emanuel and the school board in a statement issued after the decision.

“Closing schools is not an education plan. It is a scorched earth policy,” teachers union chief Karen Lewis said.

School officials have defended the proposed closings, saying they were necessary to help the district reduce a $1 billion budget deficit. The officials have promised displaced students will be sent to better-performing schools with amenities such as air conditioning, libraries and upgraded facilities.

When the district first announced the proposed closings in March, it estimated it would save $560 million in repairs and maintenance work over 10 years plus $430 million in operating costs. The district has since reduced the capital cost saving to $437 million over 10 years, attributing the discrepancy to outdated assessments.

U.S. urban school districts have been grappling with declining enrollment, and 70 large- or mid-sized cities have closed schools over the past decade, averaging 11 per district, according to the National Education Association, a labor union for school teachers.

This includes Washington, D.C., which closed 23 schools in 2008 and plans to close 15 more over the next two years.

Fueling union anger over the closings in Chicago is the expansion of publicly funded, but mostly non-union charter schools. The number of charter schools has risen even as neighborhood public schools are closed.

Chicago has promised a five-year moratorium on school closings, following this year.

Parents have complained that closing neighborhood schools endanger their children because they are exposed to greater gang violence if they cross neighborhood boundaries in a city that recorded 506 murders in 2012, largely due to gang violence.

Many of the schools being closed are in the same neighborhoods that have seen frequent gun violence.